Connecting to Cohan: a special evening of dance honouring Robert Cohan, presented by Yorke Dance Project. The Mill Banbury, 14 May 2022 – Maggie Watson reviews

Yorke Dance Project’s Connecting to Cohan evening at The Mill Banbury fell into three parts: five solo dances drawn from Robert Cohan’s last work Afternoon Conversations with Dancers; an on-stage discussion between Richard Alston, Yolande Yorke-Edgell and Laurel Dalley Smith, and finally Lockdown Portraits, a film showing seven of the solos, filmed on locations chosen by Cohan.

Cohan’s last dances are intensely moving.  He consulted Alston about his recent work shortly before embarking on the project, and Alston responded that the group dances Cohan was creating were similar to his earlier works, but the solos were completely original and new.  Cohan went on to create Afternoon Conversations with Dancers, a collection of eight solos on which he worked collaboratively in dialogue with each dancer, exchanging ideas in words and movement, initially in the studio and then during lockdown over Zoom.

 

‘Dance as Grace: Paradoxes and Possibilities’: two TORCH seminars with live dance performances from Yorke Dance Project. Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College Oxford, 18th & 19th June 2021 – Maggie Watson reports

The Grace Project is an interdisciplinary investigation into the concept of ‘grace’ in all its forms, which evolved from the research of Professor Sue Jones on literature and dance.  Grace has been central to the development of dance aesthetics, but it has also been challenged by practitioners of modern and contemporary dance.  These two seminars, which were attended by socially-distanced groups of academics, practitioners and interested local people, interrogated the question of what constitutes grace by examining five contrasting dances performed by, and discussed with, members of the Yorke Dance Project led by Yolande Yorke-Edgell.

The dancers presented works by Robert Cohan, Kenneth MacMillan and Yorke-Edgell, the latter consciously channelling the influences of Richard Alston and Bella Lewitzky (who was herself influenced by the choreographer Lester Horton).

 

Twenty: Yorke Dance Project’s 20th anniversary season, Swindon Dance, 26th April 2019 – Maggie Watson reviews

This was a stunning evening of new dance works, alongside extracts from Kenneth MacMillan’s newly revived ballet Playground.  The curtain raiser Who’s It?!, choreographed collaboratively by Edd Mitton and Jordi Calpe Serrats with students from the Centre for Advanced Training at Swindon Dance Centre, was an ingenious preparation for MacMillan’s deeply disturbing work with its references to children’s games. In the duets from Playground that followed, Oxana Panchenko as the Girl with make-up and Jonathan Goddard as The Youth portrayed an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship, enmeshed within violent and coercive social forces, in a ballet that pushes game-playing to a horrible conclusion.

 

Twenty: Yorke Dance Project in works by MacMillan, Cohan, Stoller and Yorke-Edgell, Mill Arts Centre Banbury 4th April 2019

Yorke Dance Project currently celebrates 20 years of performing inspiring dance by past masters and emerging artists from the UK and USA. This celebratory programme features works by world renowned choreographers Kenneth MacMillan and Robert Cohan alongside emerging Los Angeles choreographer Sophia Stoller with a commissioned score by Justin Scheid. Completing the programme is an exciting new work by artistic director Yolande Yorke-Edgell. April brings a not to be missed opportunity to see the company at the Mill Arts Centre, Banbury.

MacMillan’s Playground is one of the featured works in this anniversary programme, its first restaging since its premiere at the 1979 Edinburgh Festival and performed to music by Gordon Crosse. Costumes and set have been reimagined by Charlotte MacMillan.  Also featured is Cohan’s Communion set to music by Nils Frahm and designed by past Cohan collaborator from London Contemporary Dance Theatre,  John B Read.  Completing the programme is a Cohan Collective commission from Stoller and composer Justin Scheid Between and Within. The final work Imprint by Yorke-Edgell reflects her own experience of working with dance legends Richard Alston, Bella Lewtizky and Robert Cohan.  With highly acclaimed and athletic dancers performing engaging, thought provoking and enlightening new work, this is a rare evening of exceptional dance.

Dancers for the tour of this programme include wonderful guest artists Jonathan Goddard, Romany Pajdak (Royal Ballet Company), Dane Hurst, and Oxana Panchenko (Michael Clark Company). Ben Warbis will be returning to YDP as will last year’s apprentice, Ellie Ferguson, dancing alongside company members Edd Mitton, Abigail Attard Montalto and Freya Jeffs.  Yorke Dance Project is also excited to be working again with lighting designer Zeynep Kepekli.

The performance at Banbury will include a curtain raiser by The Mill’s own Remarkable Dance Company.

Performance:  Thursday 4th April 7.30pm

Venue:  The Mill Arts Centre, Spiceball Park, Banbury, Oxfordshire OX16 5QE

Tickets:  from £15, book online here or call the Box Office on 01295 279002

Find out more about Yorke Dance Project here

 

 

Rewind Forward: Yorke Dance Project at The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, 22 September 2016 – Maggie Watson reviews

Yorke Dance Project’s innovative programme at The Mill Arts Centre was an exceptional and exciting opportunity to see both new work and a rarely performed twentieth century ballet.

Sea of Troubles, inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which Kenneth MacMillan created for Dance Advance in 1988, has been reconstructed by its notator Jane Elliott and rehearsed by Susie Crow, who was one of the original cast. Breaking free from the constraint of strict narrative structure, MacMillan’s barefoot ballet explores the psychological trauma that lies beneath the surface of the play as Hamlet, an embodiment of the ‘outsider’, is tormented by the need for revenge. Dancers must turn on an emotional sixpence as they share roles, representing first one character and then another, to music that, unusually for ballets of the nineteen-eighties, ‘spliced’ together pieces by different composers (Anton Von Webern and Bohuslav Martinu).

 

Yorke Dance Project in Rewind Forward at The Mill Arts Centre Banbury, Thursday 22nd September 2016

Following a sold-out preview performance at the Royal Opera House’s Clore Studio earlier this year, dynamic Yorke Dance Project’s latest touring programme Rewind Forward (formerly titled Inspirit) will be touring this Autumn and in Spring 2017, and opens its tour with performance at The Mill Arts Centre Banbury on Thursday 22nd September as part of their current Season of Dance. Rewind Forward features work which crosses boundaries between ballet and contemporary dance, placing revivals of two masterworks from Kenneth MacMillan and Robert Cohan alongside three, stunning world premieres by Robert Cohan, Yolande Yorke-Edgell and Charlotte Edmonds.

The programme features a rare reconstruction of Kenneth MacMillan’s 1988 Sea of Troubles, a short work originally created for Dance Advance, an ensemble of former members of the Royal Ballet. In a programme note for the premiere MacMillan explained his inspiration: “I have taken as a starting point the effect of the death of Hamlet’s father without a literal telling of the play. With the appearance of his father’s ghost, and Hamlet’s realisation of the need for revenge, his tormented world became a nightmare”

Alongside MacMillan’s work is a revival of Robert Cohan’s Nympheas. Choreographed in 1987, Cohan’s serene duet is set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune.  The programme also includes the world premiere of Cohan’s newest duet, Lacrymosa, set to music by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.

For the second time, the company performs a world premiere by Charlotte Edmonds, currently the Royal Ballet’s Young Choreographer in Residence. With support from the PRS Foundation, YDP commissioned Edmonds and composer Donna Mckevitt to create a new work following their participation in the company’s 2015 Cohan Collective.  Self is inspired by the famous trio from MacMillan’s Manon. The programme concludes with the premiere of artistic director Yolande Yorke-Edgell’s Untethered, choreographed for the entire company to music by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider.

There will be an informal Question and Answer session after the show with company Director Yolande Yorke Edgell and Susie Crow, member of the original cast of Sea of Troubles.

Performance:  Thursday 22nd September 7.30pm

Venue:  The Mill Arts Centre, Spiceball Park, Banbury, Oxfordshire OX16 5QE

Tickets:  Tel: 01295 279002
Box office open Mon to Sat 10am – 8pm: or book online here

Find out more about Yorke Dance Project here

 

 

Yorke Dance Project in residence at Weston Library with Macmillan’s Sea of Troubles Sunday 18th September

As part of the Shakespeare Oxford 2016 Festival programme the Weston Library will be hosting the dynamic contemporary ballet company Yorke Dance Project directed by Yolande Yorke Edgell.  The company will be in residence on Sunday 18th September, presenting an open rehearsal and excerpts of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s rarely performed work, Sea of Troubles, based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with an ensemble of six outstanding dancers.  Nine separate scenes comprise MacMillan’s only bare-foot ballet, which focuses on Hamlet’s psychological state, interpreted through the physicality, emotion and complex partner-work of the choreography set to intense and evocative 20th century chamber music by Webern and Martinu.  Susie Crow, who danced in the original production commissioned from MacMillan in 1988 by innovative ballet company Dance Advance, will rehearse the dancers and explain the fascinating creative process.  The work will subsequently be touring as part of the company’s programme Rewind Forward, which also features works by master contemporary choreographer Robert Cohan, emerging talent Charlotte Edmonds and Yolande Yorke Edgell.

Date:  Sunday 18th September, 11.30-4.00pm

Venue:  Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford OX1

Free of charge

To fully immerse yourself in the process before the performances on Sunday 18th September, why not come to the:

Talk and Movement Workshop led by Struan Leslie and Susie Crow

Free of charge; open to all

7.30pm on Thursday 8th September at Summertown Library, South Parade, Oxford OX2 7JN.

You can see Yorke Dance Project in Rewind Forward in performance at the Mill Arts Centre in Banbury on Thursday 22nd September: book tickets here and find out about the Rewind Forward programme here

Susie Crow writes about the work of reviving Sea of Troubles here

 

Figure Ground: Yorke Dance Project at Swindon Dance, 27 February 2015 – Maggie Watson reviews

Yorke Dance Project’s Figure Ground is a glorious evening of pure dance. To see three really good new dance works and a revival of another in one programme was a rare treat.

The evening at Swindon Dance opened with a short original piece by students, that drew on ideas and movement motifs that would be seen later on. The programme proper then began with Charlotte Edmonds’ No Strings Attached to a score by Michael Gordon. It opens to the sound of rainfall with three men (Jonathan Goddard, Benjamin Warbis and Edd Mitton) powerfully dominating the space in full pliés in second with their arms extended, seeming to fill the stage. They are joined by Laurel Dalley Smith, Amy Thake and Hannah Windows, but the dancers work more as a group than as three pairs. Edmonds’ response to the music is subtle, using the underlying pulses and not just the more obvious surface rhythms for her movement patterns. Nothing is predictable, there are hints of narrative or relationships – here, the notion of the group and those outside the group; there, the suggestion of a couple – and she creates balance on stage without resorting to the purely symmetrical in this very satisfying work.

 

The Last Guru: Robert Cohan’s Life in Dance, from Martha Graham to London Contemporary Dance Theatre by Paul R. W. Jackson – Maggie Watson reviews

This remarkable book recently published by Dance Books, and including commentary by Robert Cohan himself, is far more than a dance biography.  Such has been the cultural and artistic impact of Robert Cohan that the chronological narrative account of his life also charts the introduction, development and establishment of contemporary dance as an art form in England.  It makes fascinating reading as the story of an exceptional life, while on other fronts the book debates problems such as how to balance the desires and expectations of audiences, critics, sponsors, and the various creative artists who are involved in any production.